Ideas of Good and EvilYeats, W. B. (William Butler)
Philosophy
Ideas of Good and Evil
Yeats, W. B. (William Butler)
Essays
I do not think it was accident, so subtle are the threads that lead the
soul, that made William Morris, who seems to me the one perfectly happy
and fortunate poet of modern times, celebrate the Green Tree and the
goddess Habundia, and wells and enchanted waters in so many books. In _The
Well at the World's End_ green trees and enchanted waters are shown to us,
as they were understood by old writers, who thought that the generation of
all things was through water; for when the water that gives a long and a
fortunate life and that can be found by none but such a one as all women
love is found at last, the Dry Tree, the image of the ruined land, becomes
green. To him indeed as to older writers Well and Tree are all but images
of the one thing, of an 'energy' that is not the less 'eternal delight'
because it is half of the body. He never wrote, and could not have
written, of a man or woman who was not of the kin of Well or Tree. Long
before he had named either he had made his 'Wanderers' follow a dream
indeed, but a dream of natural happiness, and all the people of all his
poems and stories from the confused beginning of his art in _The Hollow
Land_ to its end in _The Sundering Flood_, are full of the heavy sweetness
of this dream. He wrote indeed of nothing but of the quest of the Grail,
but it was the Heathen Grail that gave every man his chosen food, and not
the Grail of Malory or Wagner; and he came at last to praise, as other
men have praised the martyrs of religion or of passion, men with lucky
eyes and men whom all women love.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account